Launched in collaboration with Perth-based organisational specialist Metisphere, the 2021 International Women in Resources Mentoring Programme is designed to empower women by offering mentees opportunities to accelerate their all-round professional growth.

IWiM said it had secured support from Rio Tinto, Newmont, New Gold, SRK Consulting and Centerra Gold.

The programme would run from April to October and would likely be offered completely online, similar to this year.

Programme director Barbara Dischinger said the combination of global reach and intersectionality enabled mentees to benefit from contact with mentors and fellow mentees which otherwise might not have been possible.

"In 2021, we look forward to having more companies within the sector participate as the programme is equally beneficial to mentors," she said.

"It is a high-performance framework that fosters a ‘reverse mentoring' attitude that gives senior industry figures, both male and female, an opportunity to further hone their leadership skills."

Since the programme's launch in 2018, IWiM said 130 mentees and 44 scholarship recipients had participated, with numbers increasing each year.

The organisation was founded in 2007 to lead a global change towards gender equality in mining.

IWiM's seven-member board includes Anglo American's group head of responsible business partnerships Jon Samuel in London and Western Australia-based founder of a mining risk consultancy, Alex Atkins.